bird's remains behind the kitchen, where a quince tree sprouts. An old couple passes by the quince tree and a large fruit falls on their lap that they take home and put in an earthen jar. The fruit contains the true princess and, when the old couple leaves their cottage, the princess goes out of the earthen jar to tidy up the place. In a Chinese tale from Fujian, Da Jie (also a Cinderella variant), after Da Jie marries a rich scholar, her stepfamily devises a plan to replace her with Da Jie's smallpox-riddled stepsister, Xia Mei. Xia Mei shoves Da Jie into a well, but she turns into a sparrow, which communicates with her husband to alert him of the substitution. Xia Mei kills the sparrow and buries it in the garden. In that spot a bamboo tree grows, which soothes her husband and annoys the false spouse. Xia Mei decides to have the bamboo tree made into a bed. If the scholar sleeps on it, he feels refreshed; if the stepsister sleeps on it, she feels awful, so she notices it is Da Jie's doing. She orders the bed to be burnt down, but an old woman discovers its charred remains and brings them home. When she goes out and returns at night, she notices someone has prepared her dinner. On the third night, she senses the presence of Da Jie and helps her regain human form and later reunite her with the husband. Other regions A similar transformation sequence occurs in French-Missourian folktale L'Prince Serpent Vert pis La Valeur ("The Prince Green Snake and La Valeur"), collected by Franco-Ontarian scholar Joseph Médard Carrière. After hero La Valeur disenchants Prince Green Snake, he receives a magical shirt and sabre. After being betrayed by his wife, the princess, La Valeur is resurrected into horse form by Prince Green Snake and returns to his wife's kingdom. The wife orders the horse to be killed, but before his death, La Valeur instructs a maid to save his first three droplets of blood. She does so and three laurel trees sprout. The traitorous princess recognizes the trees and orders them to be felled, but the maid rescues three wood chips, which become three ducks. Later, the three ducks fly to the magic shirt, disappear with it and La Valeur regains his human form. A similar cycle of transformations is attested in a